


Make or Break (It's the End of the World)

by liketolaugh



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: (But there is release), Aftermath of Violence, Blood and Injury, Burns, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Medical Inaccuracies, Medical Trauma, Missing Scene, Near Death Experiences, Pre-Canon, Running Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:21:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29012730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketolaugh/pseuds/liketolaugh
Summary: Robbie and Purah make a desperate run to the Shrine of Resurrection to save Link's life. It's not easy; to say his injuries were catastrophic would be a gross understatement, and Purah doesn't have time to wonder whether or not he'll make it.There's no time for doubt.
Relationships: Link & Purah (Legend of Zelda), Link & Robbie (Legend of Zelda), Purah & Robbie (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 61





	Make or Break (It's the End of the World)

Halfway from Fort Hateno to the Great Plateau, Link let out a little sigh against Purah’s shoulder and relaxed in her arms. Immediately, she threw up an arm to signal to Robbie and skidded to a halt, her heart racing in her chest so hard it hurt.

“Is this really the time to be stopping?” he asked archly, but he still shifted gears to defend their position while she knelt to set Link down as gently as she could.

She didn’t grace that with a response; a light touch to Link’s throat confirmed her suspicion. “Link’s barely breathing and his heart’s beating like a damn mouse’s. I’m going to have to try something drastic.”

“When have you ever been afraid of trying something drastic?” Robbie snorted. Somewhere behind Purah, over the hill and out of her sight, something exploded, and metal crashed and groaned. Despite the situation, she laughed, digging into the pack she’d put together for situations just like this.

“Got that right,” she said, and reached down to shove Link’s tunic and undershirt up, exposing his chest and resolutely ignoring the way it resisted, sticking to the injuries and tearing up scabs before it gave way. Even just looking at the extent of his injuries made her wince, wet and blistered malice burns overlapping with cracked, melted skin where guardian beams had struck and struck hard. “Just warning you, he’s probably going to scream.”

“Oh, because he hasn’t done enough of that in the last half-day,” Robbie snapped, and privately, Purah had to agree. “Make it quick, Purah, we need to keep moving. My glorious bomb arrows can’t actually keep them off indefinitely.”

Purah didn’t bother responding; instead, she grimly weighed the yellow chu jelly in her hand, and then slammed it down in the middle of Link’s chest.

He didn’t scream, which was almost worse than if he had; instead, he gasped wetly, bucking in place with the force of the shock. His eyelids fluttered but didn’t open, and when he slumped back down, his breathing was a little stronger.

It was Purah that screamed, a ragged sound tearing itself out of her chest as she caught the backlash of the chu jelly, and it took her a moment to shake enough feeling back into her hands to fumble for Link’s pulse. Strong and steady again, or at least, as strong as it was going to get. She took another moment to close her eyes, gulping down air in the rush of heady relief, tears pricking at her eyes.

The air still tasted like malice. Red rolling clouds still filled the sky, and she could still hear the crash-and-stomp of the dozens of guardians pursuing Link’s body behind them. But Link wasn’t dead. Not yet.

Purah fumbled for a too-weak stamina elixir, gulped it down, and then picked him up again. He didn’t make a peep, head lolling against her shoulder. It would be easier to carry him over it, honestly – he was a small boy, but still much bigger than she could comfortably carry like a swooning bride – but she didn’t dare; he had too many injuries to risk jostling him like that, the point of her shoulder digging right into his stomach where the worst burns made the skin of his stomach wickedly thin and bloody-

“Let’s go!” she called out, and Robbie grunted at her, taking only a moment before he reappeared over the hill, still watching their backs. Without waiting for him, she turned and ran, her feet sore and legs aching from over three days of doing almost nothing else.

What had to be hundreds of miles away by now, Princess Zelda was riding a borrowed horse as hard as she could to the Great Hyrule Forest; the champions were almost certainly dead inside their divine beasts by now; and the guardians they’d painstakingly dug up, repaired, and tested one by one were swarming all over the kingdom, crushing villages and outposts.

Hyrule had fallen.

Link had stopped making high, pained noises against her arm nearly an hour ago.

And Robbie wouldn’t _shut the fuck up_ about how well his bomb arrows were working against the guardians.

“And _your_ leg is off, _your_ leg is off, _all_ of _your_ legs are off-”

She heard a loud whine and threw herself to one side, blocking Link from the clipping beam she couldn’t quite avoid, and let pain roughen her voice when she snapped, “Do something useful and watch the fucking sky, Robbie!”

“What do you think I’m doing?” he asked tersely, but she heard several more explosions go off in quick succession, deafeningly loud, and there were no more beams headed her way.

Link’s head was lolling, his breath harsh and panting against her throat. She shifted one hand to cradle it closer, keeping his neck steady, and tried not to think about the roundness of his cheeks, smeared with mud and smoke and metal splinters.

The guardians hadn’t reached Gatepost yet, but Purah was relieved to see that it had been evacuated anyway, staffed only with a skeleton force of trembling, grim-faced soldiers who parted like the red sea when they saw the flash of blue in her arms. The residents were probably already on their way west over the Hylian Promise bridge, scattering out and away from Hyrule. Purah wasn’t at all sure they would make it.

Not her problem. Her problem was breathing raggedly, starting to shiver with shock again, face clammy against her sweaty palm. She berated herself; it should’ve been the first sign of danger when he stopped shaking, but she’d been too preoccupied with the guardians in close pursuit.

Her chest ached with her own harsh and gasping breath.

Purah could have cried when they finally came within sight of the entrance to the Great Plateau. She shouted to Robbie, her voice muffled to her own ears, and he came up to grab Link from her grip so she could run on ahead, setting the trap.

This was the only chance they had to buy enough time to get Link sealed into the shrine; with the sort of pursuit they were facing, there was no way Ganon didn’t know who Link was. The sword he’d clutched like a lifeline right up until his collapse, glowing with sacred power and probably the only thing keeping his hands clean of the malice burns that coated the rest of his body-

She took a deep, shuddering breath and threw herself into setting the trap, climbing all over the wall until her fingers were raw and bleeding, shoving bombs into ancient cracks and keeping an eye on the entrance.

She wondered where Impa was.

Purah heard Robbie’s swearing before she saw him, and a few dodged guardian beams to boot. He came running by with a handful of guardians snapping right at his heels, and Purah took a deep breath, dropped down on top of the next, and, clinging to the flailing, spinning machine, set off the bombs.

The only entrance to the plateau collapsed in a series of chained explosions that sent flecks of stone flying, cutting into Purah’s face and crushing some of the pursuing guardians under the rubble. The rest were probably already swarming Gatepost and the small garrison that had remained to stand vigil over the area.

With a gasped-out, breathless scream, she plunged a dagger into the eye of the guardian she was riding, and while it was flailing in alarm, threw herself off it, tumbled to her feet, and bolted for Robbie.

Wordlessly, they traded roles again, Purah taking Link back while Robbie turned to face the remaining pursuit. They were almost done. Almost there.

“Just hold on a few minutes longer, Link,” Purah croaked, and threw herself forward, her feet pounding on the steps that curved up past the Temple of Time and to the Shrine of Resurrection. Link didn’t answer, a shivering deadweight in her arms. “Just- just a few minutes.”

Her hands were shaking so much that it took her a minute to get her slate in the pedestal, and she let it drop to the ground behind her as soon as the shrine opened, running inside and down the steps.

It was just as they’d left it, of course, sealed up as it had been. Trembling with relief, Purah set Link down on the ground to shove the lid off the tank that was their, was _his_ only hope. It clanged loudly to the ground, and she turned to drop to her knees beside him… and then stopped, hands shaking, eyes wide.

“Oh, goddess,” Purah whispered. “Oh, sweet Hylian mother goddess.”

That was how Robbie found her not a minute later, skidding in and shaking with exhaustion, glasses askew and hair a mess.

“What are you fucking waiting for?” he demanded, dropping down across from her in a mirrored posture. She swallowed.

“We’re going to have to undress him,” she said, without taking her eyes off Link. He looked small. He looked _tiny,_ and he was still shivering, clothes soaked in blood, torn and burnt and ragged and generally unsalvageable.

“And?” Robbie asked impatiently, already reaching for the hem of Link’s tunic. She could see his hands shaking with exhaustion, bruised and bloody from battle.

“His skin is going to come up with it,” she said. Her voice cracked.

Robbie stopped, and when she glanced up at him, he was staring at her, dead pale. It was that, somehow, that gave Purah the strength to reach forward instead, her heads deliberately steady as she did her best to ease Link’s tunic away, carefully, as carefully as she could.

It came away easier than anything else was going to, her having ripped most of it up earlier. It was only stuck there with blood, not skin and scabs, and Link only stirred a little as she pulled it away, breath hitching softly and deepening into a painful moan as she pushed one of his shoulders up. The tunic came off with minimal resistance, though she swore softly as it caught on his right bracer.

“Get his bracers off,” she said without looking, trying to talk herself into the next step. Robbie obeyed without question, fumbling to get the thick leather armguards and gloves off before she tackled the undershirt, and then dropped down to get his boots off, the lazy bastard, giving her all the dirty work.

Purah took a deep breath, and then shifted Link enough that she could start to peel the shirt off over his chest. And even if he hadn’t noticed any of the rest of it, he _definitely_ noticed that, face contorting even in unconsciousness and a whine oozing out of his chest, trying weakly to twist away. She had to push one of his arms far up to get it up and over, and the further she went, the more Link squirmed like a fish on a hook, gasping cries he hadn’t made in hours wrenching out of him. She couldn’t tell what of his skin had already been torn before she peeled the shirt away, and what she was ripping herself, fingers worming up his bloodied chest and shoulder and arm.

Her face was wet, and she was whispering a stream of apologies that were distinctly unlike her. When another pair of hands came to help her, and she looked up, she was surprised to find that Robbie’s was too.

“Hurry,” Robbie croaked, and she didn’t grace that with a response either.

When the undershirt was almost off, just the head and one arm left, she took a deep breath, met Robbie’s eyes, and tore it the rest of the way off in one sharp motion.

Link _screamed,_ a horrible sound that echoed off the walls, and arched off the floor like she’d smashed another chu jelly into his chest. He crashed back down too fast for either of them to catch his head, which smacked off the stone, and he wasn’t quite awake enough to sob, but she could see, she could see that he was trying.

When Purah scraped her focus together, she could even see why: some of the worst burns he had were on _both_ his shoulders, not just the one, and his forearms too. And it had been a blessing, too, that she’d already torn the shirt off his stomach, because his entire front was just a mess of blisters and red burnt skin and parts that were ashen or charred or-

Link had gone limp again, his breath barely a weak rasp and his trembling come to a halt. She didn’t even bother checking his pulse before she was reaching for the second chu jelly.

It was noticeably less effective this time. Link barely jerked when she hit him with it, and while his breathing steadied and deepened a little, it wasn’t nearly a dramatic enough difference for her liking and he didn’t start shivering again. They had to hurry.

Her hands hurt.

“We need to hurry,” Purah tried to say, but it came out so hoarse that it was unintelligible. Robbie seemed to get the idea anyway, and they both moved down Link’s body to start working on his pants.

His legs weren’t nearly as bad off as his chest, thank the goddesses, but they were still working as carefully as they could to peel the cloth off his thighs, scabs breaking and bleeding. Link had stopped gasping again, but he whimpered softly with each jerk, and he was slack enough to make Purah’s heart stutter with fear.

It was his left knee that turned out to be the worst of it; a guardian beam had nearly blown his legs off, and the cloth of his trousers had burnt and melded into the torn flesh in the back of that knee, while the front of both was soaked with malice muck where Purah had actually _seen_ him collapse to his knees in exhaustion.

He’d pushed himself back up with his shaking palms; it was only the sacred power of his sword that saved his hands, she suspected, keeping them clean and untouched.

“Come on, Link, we’re almost there,” she babbled breathlessly, close to sobbing herself, and together she and Robbie slid his pants the rest of the way off, tossing the aside. Link only jerked weakly, head tossing from one side to the other in a dull loll.

“We can leave his boxers on, can’t we?” Robbie said almost desperately, looking wild-eyed and frazzled. “They’re fine, they’re intact, he’s probably not injured down there.”

Purah stared for a moment, and then, dizzily, nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s fine. That’s fine. Let’s get him in.”

With Purah at his head and Robbie at his feet, they hauled him up as steadily as they could, and finally, _finally,_ lowered him into the empty tank. Leaving Robbie to shove the lid back on, sealing Hylia’s hero inside, Purah pawed through her pack looking for Link’s Sheikah Slate and stumbled over to the pedestal that would activate the shrine.

There was a long minute of silence, both of them breathing hard, Link not hard enough.

“Do it,” Robbie rasped at last, and Purah shoved the slate into the slot and spun around, barely catching herself when she stumbled.

The shrine lighting changed from blue to orange, and slowly, the tank filled up to submerge Link in a thick, semitransparent blue fluid. He kept breathing, slow and shallow, as if unaffected. And that was it. He was in. They’d done it.

Purah let her knees collapse under her, buried her face in her hands, and cried.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write this one out for weeks, guys, maybe months. This is the starting point I'm working with in Color verse, as well as any other fics I eventually manage to post.
> 
> Malice burns are most closely related to chemical burns, except, you know, magic. Guardian beams also cause burns, some horrible combination of microwaving (cooking people from the inside out) and concussive force.
> 
> Second- or third-degree burns on 40% of the human body is considered the point at which death is substantially more likely. That's the scarring Link ends up with in all of my verses. The original burns were probably a good bit bigger.
> 
> I hope you liked this, and please leave a comment!


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